Developing scholarly communities as learning environments for doctoral students

The quality of PhD training can be conceived of as being dependent on the learning environment provided by the scholarly community. Our paper explores PhD students' ideas about themselves as a part of this community, and their perceptions of their learning environment in the context of the University of Helsinki, Finland. The study is a part of a larger national research project. The present study includes data collected from three faculties: arts, medicine, and behavioral sciences. Altogether, 602 doctoral candidates responded to the survey. Results suggested that both the definitions of "scholarly community" given by the students and their experience of membership in this very community varied considerably. About one third of the PhD students did not perceive themselves as being members of any scholarly community at all. There appears to be an urgent need for more effective means of fostering PhD students' experience of active agency within scholarly communities.